WHISKEYTOWN!

See? This post isn't even Obama-related. With the release of a great new album by a cleaned-up Ryan Adams, "Cardinalogy," it's worth digging back to his old band, Whiskeytown. They were a rough and tumble band that played Americana, alt.country, no depression music--or whatever you want to call it--music built with equal parts old school country and indie rock, a continuation of the country rock lineage of Gram Parsons (the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers) and Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

These sweethearts of the rodeo occasionally ventured out from their gilded palace of sin to play for adoring fans, and I saw them one time, years back, and they were on fire. They say bad boy Adams has cleaned up his act, and that's good. In the clip above they play "Dancing with the Women at the Bar" on Austin City Limits.

Ryan Adams wakes up under a tree with his hair full of leaves: booze, drugs, and temper tantrums have plagued a career that zig-zags like a drunken sailor on a unicycle, but now he's clean and sober and the new album is great.


Ryan Adams and the Cardinals perform "Fix it" on the Letterman Show.

Read the Rolling Stone review of the "Cardinalogy" here.
For a Ryan Adams piece in the NYTimes, click here.
For a story from Paste Magazine click here.